Happy Martin Luther King Jr Day and um… Webcomics!

It's a holiday in the U.S. and the kind of day that I would hope the rest of the world can, if not celebrate, acknowledge happily.  (Which puts it in a different category than celebrating more nationalistic – George Washington – or controversial – Cristos Columbus – figures from history).  I wonder if India has a Mahatma Gandhi day?  Apparently they do – one for his birth and one for his death.

Haiti.  Wow, it's a good thing I don't play a pretend-actual-news journalist on the Internet because I don't think I could find the words to write adequately about the situation there.  It's an immense tragedy.  If you can afford to donate something Doctors Without Borders is a group that was one of the first in and does a tremendous amount of good.

Hosting and Coding Geekery.  If you're not just a webcomics geek but have educated opinions on webhosting, wordpress or drupal I would really like to talk to you.  My current hosting at media temple is not working for ComixTALK.  I have been trying to sort out plans for the new year for hosting and whether to switch CMSs but I feel overwhelmed.  I had some good conversations on twitter and im last night but what I really need is just more advice — the Internet is CONFUSING when you ask what is best on these questions.  Email me at xerexes AT gmail DOT com or twitter to xerexes or gchat to xerexes or just add a comment to this post here.  Once I get all this squared away I have some ideas about redoing the theme here at ComixTALK.  

Webcomics.  Oh you probably came here this morning to read about comics presented in pixelated form, didn't you?  First things first – the switch to using RSS feeds in Google Reader for my daily webcomics "page" is a success.  It's much more convenient.  If you want me to check out YOUR webcomic send it to me (see above) somehow and I will!  I can't write about  it if I haven't read it 🙂

But this approach still leaves me thinking about how to find the "good" webcomics.  And let's be honest — when I say "good" I mean good in terms of what I want to read.  Your "good" may be completely different.  Either way there's a LOT of comics now and 99% of them seem to be on the Internet in some form or another.  Over at Savage Critics, Abhay Khosla has a surprisingly good (surprising because I thought it was going to be just a snarkfest and it turned out to be quite thoughtful) essay on what it's like to live in a world of almost infinite comic choices.  I also loved his take on ComixTALK's 2009 Roundtable:

Comixtalk did a year-end roundtable in December 2009, in which they spoke to not less than eight people. Between the eight of them, roughly five billion webcomics are mentioned over the course of the round-table. So: be sure to check those out…

Joystiq's weekly webcomic roundup seems to be a bit of an institution now for gaming comics.  Is there anything like it for other subjects Movie comics? Celebrity comics? New and opinion sites?  I don't offer a practical plan for convincing a successful site in a subject area to add a webcomic roundup but I think it would be worth working on.  (If you're a smaller site linked to by Joystiq — how much of a bump are you getting from the exposure?)

At the end of this month, Ryan North's Project Wonderful is going to add geotargeting to it's service – here Ryan explains more about the benefits of this feature. I used a mix of PW, Blog Ads and ComicSpace's Ad service Webcomics World over the last year and if I had to keep one I'd stick with PW right now.

El Santo reviews Dead Winter, a zombie webcomic.  4 Stars and he compares it favorably to Jenny Romanchuk’s Zombie Hunters and Bobby Crosby's Last Blood.

Delos writes about Sandra De Haan, a Netherlands artist, who has translated some of her journal webcomics into English.  I like the crispy cartoony artwork here. 

Also via Delos is a link to The Blueprint Database – a vast collection of blueprints from cars to the Millenium Falcon.

Has everyone seen The Fantastic Mr Fox?  I want to but haven't yet.  Did see a wonderful exhibit on it at the Cartoon Museum and spotted this acceptance speech at the National Board of Review ceremony (via Drawn!)

Speaking of movies the news that Ryan Estrada is making a movie version of his webcomic The Kind You Don't Take Home to Mother has bounced around the web.  All I can say is I am really looking forward to this and I hope Ryan succeeds in getting it done.

Last not least, ComixTALK friend for life Jon Morris has a funny essay up at Heavy.com on the Strange Life and Times of Richie Rich.

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Xaviar Xerexes

Wandering webcomic ronin. Created Comixpedia (2002-2005) and ComixTalk (2006-2012; 2016-?). Made a lot of unfinished comics and novels.